The Landworkers’ Radio

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

This is the last episode of Landworkers’ Radio seasonal pilot! We end this podcast season with the launch of our 2023 calendar, On Common Ground. This year’s calendar shares twelve inspiring stories about land rights and land justice, and so for this episode, we’ve explored the story ‘the urban growing project’, in conversation with Richard Galpin, member of the London Freedom Seed Bank.

For thousands of years farmers, growers, peasants and land workers across the world have been saving and exchanging seeds, passing them down from one generation to the next. But over the past one hundred years, the knowledge, skill and practice of seed saving, as well as many varieties of seed, have been all but lost. However, around the world, and here in the UK, there is a growing movement to rebuild seed diversity and seed sovereignty in both urban and rural settings. This movement is centred around working to adapt and build seed resilience in the face of climate change, retraining growers and farmers in the lost art of seed custodianship,and celebrating our seed stories and food and cultural heritages. 

The London Freedom Seed Bank is a network of gardeners and food growers across London and was set up to collectively protect, store and keep alive rare and unusual varieties – seed that is grown and saved in London to ensure it has adapted and acclimatised to local growing conditions, making a more resilient seed stock for urban environments.

This series was produced by Dee Butterly and Georgie Styles and was brought to you by the Landworkers Alliance. Thanks so much to all of our listeners and collaborators who joined us over the season. If you have any feedback to help shape our future audio direction here at the LWA, then please get in touch. Bye for now!

The Landworkers’ Radio – where you ask the questions, we investigate the answers

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

Perceptions of food sovereignty as a concept have often remained limited to the realm of food production and food security.

Although the term food sovereignty inherently puts ‘food in our hands’ (collectivising the power to make decisions about seeds, food production, food waste, and trade – as well as having more food on our plates in a literal sense) there is a danger of limiting ourselves as food growers, farmers, fishers and community organisers if we think of food sovereignty as solely a ‘food’ issue. 

In our first landworkers radio episode we explored food sovereignty and its inherent connection with grassroots organising. And so in this episode we want to find out how grassroots organising for food sovereignty relates to the notion of justice.

Join Georgie Styles and guest host Jo Kamal from the LWA and Food In Our Hands in conversation with India Hamilton from The Sustainable Cooperative (SCOOP) in Jersey to find out how the concept of food sovereignty as a movement for justice works on the ground and in the day to day practices of community food projects like SCOOP.

This episode was produced in collaboration with Food In Our Hands.

The Landworkers’ Radio – where you ask the questions, we investigate the answers

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

The world is abundant in cultures and food traditions that centre around the farming, processing and cooking of grains.

The central role that grains play in our cultures and diets, makes it one of the most important and yet contentious food substances in the world. It feeds and nourishes our societies, bringing people together in community and celebration. Whilst in times of scarcity, price fluctuation and crises it is an attributing cause of war, conflict and famine.  

The recent war on Ukraine has exposed the overwhelming concentration of the globalised food system, and our reliance on only a few varieties of grain. Here in the UK we import 130 million pounds worth of grain every year from Ukraine including wheat, maize, barley, and rice and we have been affected with rises in food prices and threats to the supply of food as well as gas for fertilizers and fuel. These impacts highlight just how much our food systems are unable to withstand the shocks of political conflict and war, and is highly vulnerable in the face of climate breakdown – so are we facing a grain crisis?

To understand more about the context of grain here in the UK, hosts Georgie Styles and Dee Butterly spoke with Kimberley Bell, founder of the UK Grain Lab and the Small Food Bakery in Nottingham which aims to demonstrate that small scale food manufacturing businesses have a crucial role to play in enabling transition to a more resilient, nourishing and equitable food system.

The Landworkers’ Radio – where you ask the questions, we investigate the answers

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

When you think about land, what comes to mind? Do you have a reaction? Maybe it evokes joy, peace, anger or frustration.

Land is one of the most foundational resources needed for farming, forestry, food and fibre production and yet finding ways to access and work with the land here in the UK is becoming increasingly difficult. 

The UK has one of the highest levels of concentrated landownership in the world, with less than 1% of the population owning over half of all agricultural land. Over the past 20 years, over 50,000 small scale farms in the UK have been either closed down or consolidated, in part due to little government support for anyone farming on less than 5 hectares of land. Rapid increases in land prices, in places tripling in price per acre, have caused huge challenges for regeneration in land-use, as new entrants find themselves almost entirely locked out of the industry.

Join hosts Georgie Styles and Dee Butterly as they explore the issues around land access for new entrant farmers, foresters and landworkers. In conversation with Sinead Fenton from Aweside Farm in East Sussex, we hear about her journey onto the land, the issues she has faced and what progressive, innovative models are out there to help secure land access for new entrants like her.

The Landworkers’ Radio – where you ask the questions, we investigate the answers

This podcast is available to listen via the Landworkers’ Radio on Spotify, iTunes and most other podcast apps.

Our global food, farming and land-use systems are on the brink of collapse and are failing to adapt to recent shocks like Covid-19, increased climate destruction and most recently, the war on Ukraine. 

Join hosts Georgie Styles and Dee Butterly as they take a look at the most burning question of our time – how can we transform our food, farming and land-use systems? 

In conversation with Ramona Duminciou from Eco Ruralis and La Via Campesina, and Jyoti Fernandes from the Landworkers’ Alliance, this episode explores the historical and current contexts of our global food and farming systems, the building of the food sovereignty movement and the importance of radical grassroots action and international solidarity networks in the hope of food system transformation. 

The Landworkers’ Radio – where you ask the questions, we investigate the answers